Chlo was trembling. The very worst thing about being able to look along timelines, was knowing just how bad things were going to get. She walked in a straight line through the palace, moving her reality through walls and scaring a visiting party official from Pineus. Chlo knew he was about to ask her to do something he'd forbidden her to do for so very long, interfere with the natural course of reality. She saw death and destruction in her future and she still had nightmares about Panajarum.
"He can't make me do it." She muttered to herself.
A party of visiting school children from Menura gave her a worried look as she muttered and walked through them and out a door on the far side of the room.
"He'll hate me again, I know it."
Chlo was finally on the veranda overlooking his favourite garden. He was there, smiling at her and beckoning at her to approach. She walked towards him, but stopped a few feet away, refusing to sit opposite him.
"Bastard ! You've always told me this is wrong." She screamed.
Sikush came to her and took her to a rarely used long sofa at the back of the veranda.
"Medrona and its moons have a population of over a billion Chlo, you'll be saving most of them. With luck, you'll be killing no one."
They shared a part of each other consciousness, she knew he wasn't lying, but the images refused to leave her head.
"I see it, death and worse than death, far worse. Then you'll hate me again !"
He was stroking her hair as she sobbed.
"If Medrona goes, then Ventella will leave the empire. Why stay if we can't protect their colonies ? If Ventella goes, they'll all go, the empire will be over."
"Send someone else."
"There is no one else Chlo, no one who will succeed at least. If I send The Damned against the deities they'll all die, you are the only one who can do this."
She pulled away from him, tears still filling her eyes.
"What do you want me to do ?" She asked.
"You can't move the planet, but you can move the two warring deities. Move them to another system, better still another bubble universe. Put them close to each other, make them face the possibility of mutual destruction. My guess is that they'll both calm down and run away."
"Your guess !! Have you looked along the timeline ?"
"Yes Chlo, of course I have. Nothing is certain with the deities, but I don't see the death and destruction you talk of."
His guess, his fucking guess ! Chlo could see the deities definitely not running, but not attacking each other either and there was something bad on her timeline, something that terrified her.
"Can't you do it ? Take Minraver with you. The two of you together can beat the deities, you can beat anyone."
He stood up and paced up and down in front of her. It shocked her more than if he'd struck her, he never paced.
"No. There are rules that can't be broken, you know that. The deities are there to keep us in order, to rebalance our excesses, not the other way around."
Suddenly he was next to her on the sofa and holding her hand.
"If we attacked the deities, the balance would shift so far, the outcome would be so severe...... I might as well release our prisoner myself. It has to be you Chlo, I need your help."
She touched her forehead against his and then kissed him.
"Do you promise not to hate me ?"
"I never did hate you Chlo, I just despaired about you for a time."
Chlo got up and looked down at him, her left Hand gently rubbing his cheek.
"I will do this for you."
Chlo moved herself to the vicinity of Medrona, 57th planet to be annexed by the Ventellan alliance and currently an unwitting victim of a conflict between deities.
