Clock's Ticking

Dogma

Knowing that more guards will show up any second Sylvie and I take Ranslayer to the courtroom. Hoping it'll buy us a bit more time to talk to her before anyone arrives. "Give me your TemPad," I hold out my hand to Ranslayer, who is on the ground, and she hands to it to me.

"Who's really behind the TVA?" Sylvie looms over Ranslayer.

Ranslayer sighs and props herself up on her elbows, "I'm as in the dark as the two of you are."

Sylvie places a foot on Ranslayer's shoulder and pushes her back down, "poor Judge Ranslayer. Your whole reality's been destroyed."

"Bet that sucks," I shrug my shoulders, "too bad neither of us knows how that feels."

"Tell me, how does it feel to be on the other side of it?" Sylvie moves her foot off of Ranslayer and looks around, "this is it, isn't it?" While Sylvie looks around, Ranslayer's stands, "this is where you dragged me after you stole my life. Where Kamaria and Loki were taken after you stole theirs."

I step toward Ranslayer, still feeling the rage of watching Loki die before my eyes, "a fitting place to take yours."

Ranslayer takes a step back, "and what if I said Loki wasn't dead? Now yet anyway."

I take a deep breath and can feel tears begin to fill my eyes again, before I feel Sylvie's hand on my back, "I'd say you were lying and I'd advice against it. Kamaria has been hurt enough, she doesn't need to hear your pathetic attempt to save your own life."

"Maybe I am lying. Or maybe we want the same thing."

I sniff a bit and shake my head, "how is he still alive?"

"And how will saving him get us closer to who's really behind the TVA?" Sylvie steps toward Ranslayer.

"It's complicated," Ranslayer shrugs, as she does Sylvie takes another aggressive step toward her, lifting the blade at the end of the Pruning rod and aiming it at Ranslayer. "I'm telling you this willingly."

"Why?"

"Because I wanna know who's at the top of this. I want to know who lied to me." Sylvie lowers the blade she had raised to Ranslayer, before looking over to me. I am so tired of fighting and being lied too, but I can't risk Ranslayer telling us the truth and that Loki and Mobius might really still be alive, somewhere. I take a deep breath and nod to Ranslayer, "when we prune a branched reality, it's impossible to destroy all of its matter. So we move it to a place on the timeline where it won't continue growing. Basically, the branched timeline isn't reset. It's transferred."

"To where?"

"A void at the end of time. Where every instance of existence collides at the same point and simply stops."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

I scoff, "well, you'd better start thinking real hard."

"The dogma states that the end of time is still being written, you know that."

"That the Time-Keepers are transforming it into a utopia. Yeah, I know."

"That's nice," Sylvie grins, "super believable."

"Yeah, well, you tend to get on board with just about anything when the options are join us or die, so..."

"Whatever the real reason..." Ranslayer shakes her head, "nothing ever comes back from there. I can help you if you trust me."

"Why would we do that?"

"Because you don't really have another choice."