Leave us alone, the delvers said. Stop yelling! Stop it all! Why hasn’t it stopped?
I sorted through the impressions, and kind of understood. To the delvers, all times and places were as one. But by interacting with us, they were forced to confine themselves to our way of existence.
That said, they couldn’t truly see the future. Rather, they existed in all times at once, and so couldn’t separate and distinguish future from past or present.
Yeah, it was tough to explain. Regardless, I felt their pain. That, it seemed, was universal across dimensions.
“My, my,” Winzik said. “No need to shout. I can make the pain stop. But if I lose this war… Well, would you like a repeat of what happened to the delver who was corrupted? The noise who did that is among the noises I fight against.”
It seemed he knew how I’d saved Starsight. I wanted to scream at the delvers, explain that I’d helped one of their number, not corrupted them. But suddenly I understood what they’d meant earlier, when chasing me. When they’d said “What did you do to the Us?” they’d been referring to the one I’d separated out.
We consider this trade, the delvers said to Winzik.
“Yes, take your time,” Winzik said. “As much as you need.”
We have no need of time. We hate it.
Yes, they did. But I could feel something more from them. Beyond their hatred of time and individuality, there was a hatred of something else. Something that was coming. Something they…feared? I pushed a little harder, to get more information.
They turned toward me. Scud.
I panicked and darted away, retreating toward my body. Thinking about the implications of what I’d heard would have to wait, for my mental fatigue seized control.
I found true sleep at last.
I woke to the feeling of something nudging me. M-Bot? Yes, he was poking me with a drone arm.
I yawned, stretching. Curiously, my strange experiences the previous night were perfectly crisp in my mind. Talking to Jorgen, feeling his concern. Then overhearing the conversation between Winzik and the delvers.
Scud. Winzik was trying to make a deal with the delvers.
If he succeeded, the war would take a very, very bad turn.
“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “You have been asleep for ten hours, per my internal chronometer. Chet just got up and left the cave. I woke you, as you requested.”
I sat up in the dim light, my back stiff from resting on stone.
M-Bot hovered closer. “I,” he said, “would like to be acknowledged. It was exceptionally boring watching you two all night.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry to make you keep watch like that, but I slept more soundly knowing you were there.”
“Well, to be honest, waiting isn’t as bad for me as it is for a human. I can change how quickly time seems to pass for me by speeding up or slowing down my processor. I’m going to go take a cactus break. Let me know if you need me to do anything else super boring.”
He floated off out of the cave, and I followed. Chet stood on some of the higher rocks of the hills here, looking outward. A heroic pose, focused, determined.
I climbed up beside him and adopted a similar pose, staring across the expanse of flying chunks to the distant lightburst. Home of the delvers.
“Two hundred years,” Chet said. “And I’m finally going to do it. Walk the Path of Elders.”
“Why have you never tried?”
“At first, I didn’t know about it,” he said. “After that, I didn’t really understand what it was. Now…” He glanced at me. “I’ve never found a place I was afraid to travel, Spensa Nightshade. I always thought I’d be willing to explore everything and anything! But then I found something inside me, inside my head, that I didn’t understand.”
“I felt kind of the same way.”
“It all worried me,” he said. “Chet Starfinder, afraid to explore his own mind…” He glanced outward. “I can make a picture in my head of the entire belt. I can visualize it somehow, know my way to every fragment. That’s how it manifests for me—other than speaking mind to mind. What about you?”
“I can do the speaking thing too, obviously,” I said. “And more, I seem to be able to intercept thoughts that others send out, even when they don’t want me to. I can use what I hear, interpret it, use it in battle by instinct. Plus, I can hyperjump—moving instantly from place to place.”
“So it is possible,” Chet said. “That sounds extremely useful.”