Lord of Entertainment

Chapter 523: Another deity title and start of Avatar production

(3rd Person POV)

It all came together for Saza at once — every piece of it, and with it the reason Arthur had felt so strangely familiar to her from the very start, no matter how little sense that had made.

"I can't believe it." She shook her head. "No wonder you can bend time. You're her son."

Arthur nodded. "Yes. And I noticed that in the other timelines, the other Arthurs still have their mother — alive and well, living as a Morningstar Prince."

He let that sit before going on. "That's what first made me wonder. Our timeline is still under the Deity of Time's protection. So even when I travel back through our own timeline, I'm held to what she permits — I can only change so much. And there's one place I can never reach at all. The moment of my birth. I can't go back and stand in front of my own mother." He turned the ring on his hand. "But the Devourer Ring can swallow timelines whole, and it read the one I couldn't. I couldn't walk into that moment myself, but through the ring I could see it. And what I saw told me she was no ordinary mortal."

His eyes came back to Saza. "And once you told me the rest of it, in that future, I put her true identity together."

The weight of it pressed down on her.

"And I know," Arthur went on, "that you carry the power to pass the title of Deity of Time to someone worthy of it."

Saza's eyes went wide — then, at last, she smiled. "You really do know everything. Yes. Before she gave herself up, she entrusted the title to me, to place in worthy hands." Her smile thinned. "I even tried to take it up myself. But as you can see, I'm not the one for it. Only someone blessed with absolute Temporal Energy has any hope of bearing it."

Arthur smiled. "Then try it on me."

Saza held his gaze for a long moment. "Very well. I shall pass the title «Deity of Time» to you."

She reached out and worked the title loose, and the instant it took hold Arthur was wrapped in a warm rainbow light — and then a blue so bright it swallowed the room. When it faded, he stood there as though he had been made new.

He stared down at his own hands. "This... I can feel it. I'm above time itself now."

"You are." Saza watched him with something close to awe. "As the Deity of Time, you stand over it. Which means putting Solarus down should be simple work for you now."

"Yes. With this Authority, I shouldn't lose to that counterpart of mine."

Saza's brow shifted. "You lost to a counterpart, and turned time back?"

"Yes. In that timeline, you never got the chance to give me the title — you told me everything, and then it was too late."

"Why?"

"Because my counterpart reached this world before my own did." Arthur's voice cooled. "He got his hooks into someone here — the one you trusted most — and used them to put a blade in you. By the time I came back for you, there was only your soul left. It told me the rest before it faded."

Saza's eyes went wide. "I died a death as pathetic as that?"

"Yes."

"And what do you mean, this counterpart of yours reached this world before ours?"

"He's aboard Solarus's Divine Ship even now. They can't set foot in this world directly — so he used a skill to seize hold of someone inside it, and sent them straight for you."

That shook her to the core. "What quarrel could a counterpart of yours possibly have with me?"

"None of his own. But once he'd taken his people here and wrung them for what they knew, he learned everything — including that you're a friend of mine. Of Arthur Pendragon."

Saza's jaw tightened. "Then why couldn't I see my own death coming? That should be impossible for me."

"Because he has ways to blind that gift of yours. He did the same to me — if not for «Check Point», he'd have tricked me into my grave as well, somewhere down the line. It was because I wasn't yet the Deity of Time, because I still lacked the true essence of the Temporal Laws." His gaze steadied. "But now that I hold the title, he won't slip past me again."

Saza let out a long breath. "Thank goodness you came back. See to it, then — be rid of that filthy counterpart of yours."

"Certainly."

Two months had passed in the home world. Barely a breath, set against the two years Arthur and the others had spent away in Saza's world.

The auditions for the cast of Avatar were done at last, and word of what came next had drawn reporters from every corner of the world to Hellfire Airport — where the spaceship stood on display, the vessel that was to carry them off the planet entirely.

"So this is the ship that's meant to fly to that certain planet — the one Hellfire's going to shoot a movie on?" one reporter said.

"Can the thing even reach space?" another put in. "And what planet are we talking about, exactly?"

Behind the barricades, the crowd stared up at the ship with plain wonder on their faces. The cast of Avatar stood off to the side, doing the same.

Then Arthur and Firfel came into the reporters' view, George at their side, and the pack closed around them in an instant.

"Mr. Arthur!" A reporter shoved a recorder forward. "Today's the launch — will this ship really move as fast as you've claimed? Our own scholars say it's flatly impossible to travel that far with the technology we have!"

George answered before Arthur could. "Listen here." He jabbed a thick finger at the hull. "This ship's got a warp built into her that spits on the physics of space. Faster than light, you understand me? Faster than light!"

"Impossible," a sour-faced reporter shot back. "Technology like that simply does not exist."

Arthur looked the pack of them over. "Then why don't a few of you come along for the ride? Perhaps that will settle it."

The reporters went quiet with surprise.

George's head whipped around. "Arthur? You're serious?"

"Why not?" Arthur said. "I see no trouble in taking passengers. They can record the whole thing themselves — that is their trade, after all. The ship's more than large enough."

The reporters had no faith in the vessel, but few of them were about to pass this up. If nothing else, here was their chance to prove the point and take the high and mighty Arthur Pendragon down a peg.

"Fine — let's board, then! Come on!" one called.

"Ha! This is all for show anyway, isn't it — just Hellfire fishing for attention for their little project," said another. "Why not play along?"

"You'd best not think of bribing honest folk," a third warned. "There's no sum of money that'll buy us saying this ship is the real thing."

Arthur only smiled. Beside him, Firfel did the same.

Before long they had all filed aboard — the cast, the crew, and, among them, Vivienne, Sylwen, and Apollonia. Not one of the reporters believed the ship would leave the world. It would lift a little way and pretend at the rest, they were sure of it.

Then the ship rose, and before any of them had finished the thought, a hard pull dragged through the whole cabin and knocked every one of them off balance.

Arthur only smiled. He had shut off the stabilizers on purpose, so there could be no mistaking it for a trick. He knew it was petty of him. But in that other timeline, the one before he held «Check Point», the press had gone home and told the world the Avatar film was never shot beyond the sky at all — that the whole of it was a hoax got up for attention. They had convinced everyone he was a liar. It had cost him little enough, and he had known it was coming, since he knew the shape of the future. Still — this time around, he could change even a small thing like this.

The ship climbed past the edge of the world, and through the windows their own planet fell away into a blue-green orb, other worlds hanging pale beyond it. Every eye went wide.

The cast could not believe what they were seeing.

Neither could the reporters.

"Th-this can't be — it has to be an illusion!" one blurted.

"No — I don't think it is." Another had a scroll already burning out in his hand. "I triggered a ward against deception the moment I stepped aboard, exactly for this. It hasn't so much as flickered."

"I brought one that lays bare any illusion magic," said a third, staring past the glass. "And I'm telling you — what's out that window is real."

The reporters could not make themselves believe it. They were truly out beyond the world now.