Fortuna Verto

24-Unveiling Chaos

The two girls looked around with alarm, having felt the entire process as yet another shift. However, this time there was nothing that resolved, a white fulfilled in its own perpetuity.

Each girl noticed that even their own form was hazy and nondescript, like a questionable existence that questioned its own existence. The two of them tried to look around for anything else, but there was nothing beyond nothing. After a bit more wandering, the two were surprised by a tap on their shoulders, spinning to face a woman of pure white. Notably, it should have been impossible to see anything pure white on a backdrop of equally pure white, but that did not seem to stop them in this case. The woman guided them properly to the nothing they should be at, before they had gotten lost in other nothing. Even conceptually, this was making both of their heads spin.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware there were any visitors. I've not actually had visitors before either, I must apologize for that as well. Well, visitors, what brings you so far from home?" "I.. we're trying to figure out what has happened to us both. We have been taken from our own world, thrown into shared circumstances as we shift together to each world in turn. We had found a book that was supposed to reveal something about everything for us, only to instead find ourselves here." "Oh my, fortune has done quite a deal upon you. Maybe I should apologize for that as well. I wasn't aware that things would have involved entreating such important guests so directly. Sorry, I'm still rather new to all this, in all accounts. I know mother had worked with quite a few of you in the past, but that was all while the rules were ones of fate instead of ones of chance. More so, never had such a meeting been so.. personal. Mother had reached out to those who had drawn close enough to speak with, even walked within the dreams of several in important cases. I know in some of my first days, mother had been graced with the essence of an important case too, a responsibility I was then assigned to. But to have someone actually enter the temporal plane, someone that commanded the temporal frost itself, I would have never even thought it possible before this meeting. To have two at once.. although maybe a pair is what becomes required in the process." The white lady seemed very fascinated with the two of them. The temporal plane, this would mean they were within the veil then, in the places between worlds. Very obviously, this might be the worst possible place they could ever get lost in.

"Anyway, yes, I guess then you have come to the right place by chance. I'm the one you would probably have to blame for being stuck in this mess, after all. You see, I had been forced to reach out beyond the veil and try to forge a connection that might change the misfortune the world is beset to. Both worlds, if I may be honest. When I had reached this world, witnessed the terms of its existence, I knew it was only slated for destruction. Being so bound.. even I could no longer escape it. This place held life, but misfortune would rob it of that very quickly. In the past, I might have been able to change its fate, but my family had long lost that potential. Fate does not shape events anymore, only chance can determine what actually happens. Everything was beyond my control. However, left with nothing but chance, I wove chance into design. If the worlds would draw so close together that they would connect, I would let a connection slip through, I would use that state of parallel to bridge probability, to create luck. It seems, in seeking out such a parallel, I had found the two of you. That was very fortunate, any luck with such chaos had been quite fleeting." The white lady then had personally been the one who had designed their link, who had made this whole thing happen. However, she had no control over it, it had only just happened. They both recalled the friend they had each lost in the process, realizing that such then was a failure of the chaos.

"Why though, why do we have to suffer this?" "To save worlds, like I said, the worlds of both parallels. I was able to reach through because a link existed, and matters of chaos had driven them even closer. The more the parallel of chaos pulls on both worlds, the more it invites chaos into each. If too much chaos is released on either world, destruction will be unleashed upon it. If this tears the veil too wide, chaos will consume it whole. I have found signs that there has already been a nearby star lost in that way. I'm also certain that the same catastrophe is what had rendered the world a husk in the first place. However, it seems this misfortune was not visited upon the other side, something that would have shifted it completely out of parallel had the one remained dead. With the parallel restored, both are at risk once again. The parallel itself is so strong that the death of one would exclusively cause the death of the other." The two girls were stunned to hear that the white lady was claiming that she was trying to resolve something so serious. Everything though remained well beyond them in the scope of things.